#74: We should ban straight men from restaurants
Death By Consumption
9/30/25 - 10/6/25
I have to warn you, I'm in the midst of a very busy month at work, so newsletter-wise [Chinua Achebe voice:] things may fall apart. It remains absolutely unconscionable that my job expects me to do labor in exchange for money! I assume Zohran will rectify this when he's sworn in. As if that weren't enough, it was Justin's 40th birthday this weekend, which meant most of the consumption over the weekend was food and alcohol at various establishments. These are not excuses, but a warning: the next few weeks might get erratic around these newsletter streets.
This week, I got scared by Netflix's latest sexy singles sent into the dating show meat grinder, I felt superior to the other patrons at fancy restaurants, I sprayed my feet (?) with an oil of dubious scientific merit, and I did not understand a scifi book.
Love Is Blind, season 9 episodes 1-3 — on Netflix
The worst part of being extra busy at work is falling behind on a new season of Love Is Blind, Netflix's nuclear strike in the war on heterosexual marriage. I dare you to watch this show and have any opinions about gay marriage moving forward. Give me a polycule in Ridgewood any day over whatever the fuck is going on in the straight parts of Colorado! This new Denver-based cast consists of some of the most terrifying people you'd ever find outside a Trump rally (or, more likely with these people, inside).
This season has introduced us to an overwhelming collection of nefarious singles, who have taken the usual dumb pod conversations and upped the level of... weirdness. On normal seasons of Love Is Blind, the couples bond over inanities like "You have a grandma? Me too!" But on this season — and I swear this isn't me being an easily triggered leftist — these couples are bonding like: "You're a fascist? Me too!" Some notable examples include an Asian/Asian duo, who admit to each other they prefer to date white people: "Typically, if I knew a guy was Asian, I'd eliminate him." "Same!" Or the guy who, in a transparent attempt to figure out if the girl he was talking to was fat, asked a lot of questions about "how you feel about nutrition," before saying, "We'll have the most nutritiously fed kids... hot, sexy kids." (When they finish filming these seasons, they should transform the pods into jail cells and keep the men there.)
But the most terrifying person we're introduced to — anyone who's already watched knows who I'm going to say — is a woman with the self-given nickname "Sparkle Megan" (why? Because she likes sparkles!). Sparkle Megan is an entrepreneur, starting some sort of nefarious-sounding business "in the wellness space" that has something to do with biohacking? I think? (Every time she describes her company to a man, it sounds like a different business.) As she effuses to one possible match about her love of "traditional gender roles," he gushes, "You pass the vibe check." Sparkle Megan is a Republican fever dream, the kind that could only come from either Colorado or Austin — a tech-worshipping MAHA aspiring tradwife, a woman who would never even look at a seed oil but is probably on the waiting list to have Elon put a malfunctioning computer chip into her brain. Love her or hate her, Sparkle Megan is the perfect representative for America in 2025, and a harbinger of what's coming. (Idea for a future yard sign: "We are the daughters of the Megans you couldn't sparkle.") You're either with Sparkle Megan or against her, and I know which side I've chosen.
Kale caesar salad — at Il Buco, in Manhattan
Il Buco is one of those NY standards that I’ve never actually visited, which we finally rectified over Justin’s birthday weekend. The cute, cozy interior was, unfortunately, not what I wanted on a randomly 90-degree October day, so I ended up spending the entire meal absolutely dripping sweat. The food was good — solidly delicious Italian classics prepared expertly, what’s not to love? — but the highlight of the dinner was the grade-A display of douchebaggery right as we arrived.
As we squeezed in at the crowded bar while waiting for our table — while glaring at the group of 3 still occupying our table, lingering endlessly despite having nothing on the table but water glasses — we were immediately annoyed with a group of bros who arrived after us and would not leave the hostess alone. The place was clearly packed, and she told them to hold on a second, but they, of course, are not guys who are willing to wait. Didn’t this hostess realize, you could feel them thinking, how charming we are?!
They lurked inches from her, violating every rule of personal space, attempting to make casual conversation, as if that was the different between being seated at 7:45 or at 7:50. “You guys busy tonight?” one asked, and she dismissed them with a very obvious, “Yep.”
“What’s your favorite dish?” they asked, still convinced they could charm their way in faster.
“The kale salad,” she said, walking away.
“That’s two knocks against her,” one douche said to the other. (For the record, the kale salad was really good. That's two knocks against them.) These two were obviously insufferably entitled dicks, but you know what? Despite showing up after us, they got seated before us, so I guess they got the last laugh.
A dessert trio — at 53, in Manhattan
You know that feeling when you become aware you're the most fun table at a restaurant? The hostess lights up when you walk in, the waiters linger a little longer at your table, laugh a little louder. It’s exciting to get the extra attention, but also you’re crushed under the weight of maintaining an entire restaurant’s vibe the whole night.
On Sunday night, practically every table at 53, an “elevated Hainanese” (ok?) restaurant in a beautiful space below MoMa, was full of wealthy uptown parents celebrating their teen kids’ birthdays, which created the weirdest dining ambience. All night, the “straight” married father of 3 across from us kept eye-fucking us over the shoulder of his wife. As he ushered her out of the restaurant with a hand on the small of her back, he maintained lingering eye contact with us all the way out the door. At the booth next to us, two TikTok girlies silently and joylessly filmed every dish and cocktail that arrived.
Between the stiff families and the silent content creators, we knew we stood out, so we comfortably slipped into the role of playing the gay clowns for the amusement of our waiter. Someone has to do it! We were rewarded for our effort with a free dessert (after we had already ordered two, naturally), and the satisfaction of having been the least-off-putting people at a fancy midtown restaurant on a Sunday night. Small victories!
Magnesium Oil Spray — from Salt Lab
I purchased this spray bottle of magnesium oil after hearing that people are spraying it on their feet (?) in order to sleep better (???). Well, call me RFK Jr., because I immediately believed it, purchased it, and tried it. Did I sleep better? It's... kind of hard to say! I think any benefits of the magnesium were counteracted by having 25 negronis at Justin's birthday party, so more testing will have to be conducted. But honestly, it's not like I even sleep badly — it's actually one of my best skills. So... why did I even buy this? Some desperate attempt to optimize every aspect of my life? A pathetic effort at maintaining some control over the uncontrollable? An innate susceptibility to advertising and capitalism, despite my conviction that I'm immune to both? Whatever the reason, I will continue to spray this oil on the soles of my feet, until I finally achieve my goal sleep of 17 hours a night.
Ancillary Justice, by Ann Leckie (2013) — paperback
This book, the first in a lauded scifi trilogy, is one of those books where you're regularly encountering sentences like: “Mercy of Sarrse One Amaat One knew almost nothing, but in the hands of the Rrrrrr, she was a piece that my enemy might use against me.” And you're just like: .......????!?!???? I only finally started to figure out what was happening on page 315 (out of 400 lol).
But from what I could understand, I enjoyed! The plot is the perfect kind of trippy shit you get in good, vintage scifi: the main character is an AI, which used to be the consciousness of an entire spaceship, until the spaceship was destroyed, isolating the AI consciousness in a single person's body — and now it's out for revenge. It's actually a fairly straightforward story, made more complicated via wild perspective shifts and that time-honored scifi tradition of making up weird societies with goofy names (I still have no idea who or what the "Rrrrrr" are, but I would also die for the Rrrrrr) which all contributes to the ~~psychedelic space opera~~ experience. Sometimes you really just need to read a book full of crazy space aliens speaking nonsense to each other!